Australia Senate approves same-sex marriage bill

Same-sex marriage took a large step towards becoming legal in Australia after a bill passed through the country's upper house senate yesterday. We should be proud of that.

The bill will now be debated by the Lower House when MPs return to Canberra next week, paving the way for same-sex marriage to be legalised by Christmas.

'Today Australia is consigning discriminatory laws to the dustbin of history, ' he said in his final speech before the vote.

But shortly after 1.30pm in the national capital, Canberra, the Senate voted in favour of passing the same-sex marriage Bill.

The bill must now proceed to the House of Representatives.

Advocates of the various religious protections that were voted down in the amendment phase voiced their disappointment.

"In the course of a generation, we have seen the LGBTI community move from rejection to tolerance, from tolerance to acceptance, and from acceptance to embrace", he said, according to BuzzFeed.

"Unfortunately I fear I have been proven true", Senator Canavan said. It was voted 42 in favour, with 12 senators voting against it.

He said he would vote "no" to the Bill "in solidarity with those over 100,000 Tasmanians who voted no".

Some conservatives had wanted to add an amendment that created two separate definitions of marriage, one for heterosexual couples and one for everyone, which was rejected.

Brandis said legalising same-sex marriage would be the "imperishable legacy" of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government.

"Look, I think, in my view, there's been a complete lack of leadership", MP Andrew Broad told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning, before the final vote.

Labor Senate leader Penny Wong said the bill's passage was a historic moment. Nearly all Labour senators voted in favour, as well as the Greens and members of the Liberal-National Coalition.

Labor voted as a bloc to defeat the changes to the original Dean Smith bill - which was developed in a cross-party committee- with the support of the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and independent senator Derryn Hinch.

Other failed amendments included efforts to allow civil officiants to refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages, one preventing discrimination based on a person's beliefs about marriage, preventing charities from losing their tax-exempt status, and one allowing parents to remove their children from classes that differed with their beliefs about marriage.

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